CICLOPS' Rev 49 Looking Ahead page is up. Highlights include a fourth monthy Voyager-class encounter with Tethys with 500m resolution over Odysseus (finally!)Detailed mosaics of Rhea's prominent ray crater and points west are on tap for Old Scabby's second closeup. This should be a really cool periapsis passage to tide us over until the 10th of September.

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...if you don't like my melody, i'll sing it in a major key, i'll sing it very happily. heavens! everybody's all aboard? let's take it back to that minor chord...

Crater Chains:Ive noticed there are a lot of these long linear features as well on Tethys, Rhea, and Iapetus, and yes even Dione. Ive started doing some fits to them and most do line up as radials to big basins, tho not always the biggest one such as Odysseus. Smaller basins and craters produce such secondary impact chains. We see something similar associated 100-km size craters on Callisto. It is when they fail to line up that they get interesting. that is why the big chains on Callisto must be tidally split comets, since there are no basins they can be linked to. ill have more to say on all this later but am currently working on the paper so have to focus on that. i note that the theory of disruption predicts that there will be no split comets at Saturn, due to its very low density..... cheers,paul

Crater Chains: i note that the theory of disruption predicts that there will be no split comets at Saturn, due to its very low density.....

How about a plunge through the rings, especially at a low angle? Could that not disrupt a comet?

Ugordan you're right about planets acting more or less as point masses, so I guess the theory Dr Shank mentions envisages Jupiter's disruptions happening pretty close in. The most uncertain parameter in any such theory must be the cohesive strengths of the comets. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a huge spread, and you might only need a few atypical ones at long intervals to produce the observed alignments on the moons. Therefore I'm a bit wary of the prediction quoted, even without the rings issue.

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